By David Blyweiss, M.D., Advanced Natural Wellness

Here’s a hard truth for many men to swallow…

If you are experiencing difficulty achieving an erection, it may be the least of your problems.

I don’t mean to minimize the importance of a healthy sex life. At all. In fact, for many men, being able to perform in bed is their very definition of being a man.

Most cases of erectile dysfunction are due to another ED, endothelial dysfunction. This is when the inner lining of blood vessels lose much of their ability to manage the traffic of critical blood flow to and from the heart. Which means that the inability to achieve an erection is an even bigger problem than most men realize. It is also a critical early warning sign of heart disease.

In fact, recent research shows that three years after a man begins experiencing ED… his risk of having a heart attack skyrockets.

So before you go and get a blue pill, consider addressing both forms of ED (erectile and endothelial dysfunction), and warding off a heart attack a full three years in advance. Here’s how…

Despite the many jokes that can be made about the male sex organ having a mind of its own, the truth is, it requires exactly what your heart requires to be healthy: adequate blood flow.

To get adequate blood flow – to the penis, the heart, or anywhere else – your muscles need to relax, so blood can flow freely through your arteries. A chemical compound called nitric oxide (NO) triggers this necessary relaxation.

Now, this is not a mystery. In fact, the pharmaceutical remedies for erectile dysfunction (ED) do increase the NO in your system. But not by helping your body to produce more nitric oxide on its own. But rather, by temporarily blocking another enzyme (PDE5) that destroys nitric oxide.

In my book, this makes the pharmaceutical remedies for ED a rather dangerous band-aid to a very serious problem.

Consider that if you’re not getting enough blood flow to the penis, you are most likely not getting enough anywhere else as or more important; brain… heart… kidneys… lungs? If you consider erectile dysfunction as the canary in the coal mine, and take steps to improve your overall vascular health, you have a much better chance of both solving the immediate problem and avoiding future problems.

My first suggestion would be to increase your production of NO. One of the best ways is with l-arginine, an amino acid that stimulates NO production. Calcium also plays a symbiotic role in the l-arginine to nitric oxide conversion.

Being aware of your diet, and whether you get l-arginine and calcium in your food and how much you need to supplement is important. If you are following my diet recommendations, odds are you will get plenty of calcium, but will need to supplement the l-arginine since it’s found mostly in dairy, meat and peanuts – foods that are left out or kept to a minimum in my diet recommendations.

You can take l-arginine as a supplement on a regular basis to enhance your blood flow to all parts of your body all the time, not just for the few hours that you want to be sexual. Soy protein isolates in manufactured food and peanuts (yes peanuts) are very high in arginine. And you can also supplement with l-arginine. The typical dose for both women and men is 50 mg of arginine daily, increasing it to 8,000 mg. as needed.

As with many nutritional supplements, taking one thing can unbalance something else. In this case, while l-arginine can increase nitric oxide significantly and safely, it should be balanced with lysine since it is this balance that keeps the HSV-1(herpes) virus from replicating itself to the point of a cold sore outbreak. If you start taking l-arginine regularly, and plan to for an extended period of time, add 1500 mg of lysine per day to stay in balance.

Getting exercise is also an important factor in improving your vascular health. If you are not moving your body for 30 minutes every day, start now. Seriously, get up and take a brisk walk the minute you finish reading this issue. Then, do it again tomorrow. You can’t afford to put it off another day.

I don’t mean to alarm you. But I can’t tell you how many men come in to my office distraught over ED, but then confess that they don’t eat right (at all) and almost never exercise.

And this is what makes pharmaceutical ED solutions so scary to me. They provide a false sense of security. They can lead you to believe you are fine. That everything is back in working order. When the truth is, if you are already experiencing ED, the clock is already ticking. And that three-year race to a heart attack is closing in.

There are a few other easy additions to your diet or supplement regimen that you should consider to get your blood flowing…

I recently wrote to you about pomegranate juice, and how good it is for your overall health and your prostate. Research also suggests that it may help with ED as well. In one study, men drinking an 8 ounce glass of pomegranate juice per day for eight weeks experienced improvements in erectile dysfunction. When I’m eating dinner at home, this is what I drink with a teaspoonful of angostura bitters added in as a digestive.

Capsaicin the ingredient that puts the hot in hot peppers, also boosts production of nitric oxide and helps with blood flow. If you are a fan of spicy foods, and you need to improve your vascular health, then by all means, indulge. If you aren’t, you can supplement with capsaicin
instead. The amount you want, 350-500 mgm is easily available in a standardized capsule… Any natural food store should have some good choices.

In a strange way, nature knows exactly how to get men to pay attention to their heart. Deprive them of the joyful use of their penis!

All joking aside, I believe that if more men took this connection seriously, we could virtually eliminate heart disease, plus enjoy healthy sex lives all the way through to old age. But it would require treating the cause of ED, not just the symptom.

References:

Meldrum DR, Gambone JC, Morris MA, Ignarro LJ., A multifaceted approach to maximize erectile function and vascular health. Fertil Steril. 2010 Dec;94(7):2514-20. Epub 2010 Jun 1.

B M Hoffman, et.al., Cardiovascular disease risk, vascular health and erectile dysfunction among middle-aged, clinically depressed men, International Journal of Impotence Research, Volume: 22, Issue: 1, 30-35 (2010)

Ignarro LJ, Byrns RE, Sumi D, et al. Pomegranate juice protects nitric oxide against oxidative destruction and enhances the biological actions of nitric oxide. Nitric Oxide. 2006;15:93–102.

Sandner P, Hutter J, Tinel H, et al. PDE5 inhibitors beyond erectile dysfunction. Int J Imp Res. 2007;19:533–543.

Jacob Rajfer, MD, Pomegranate Juice: Is It the New, All-Natural Phosphodiesterase Type 5 Inhibitor? Rev Urol. 2008 Spring; 10(2): 168–169